Pulse of the Saudi Blogosphere · Global Voices
Ahmed Al-Omran

Mohsen Al-Awaji was freed after 11 days of detention, and Aya thinks this action by the government is a tangible lesson for Saudis: “Don’t you dare to criticize the government because we are capable, at any time, of stripping you from your freedom and dignity.” Riyadhwai seemed happy about the release of Al-Awaji, but he disagreed with some opinions Al-Awaji spoke of during a talk show on a Kuwaiti TV channel before his detention. The topic discussed was women's driving, and Al-Awaji has an opposing position on this matter. Riyadhawi thinks Al-Awaji has insulted the Saudi society (Arabic) when he described Saudi youth as “sexually hysteric,” and that he made a huge mistake by such generalization.
Prometheus posts (Arabic) on the story of Abdul-Rahman, the  Afghani man who converted to Christianity, and he thinks no one is hurting Islam than Muslims themselves. “Islam has nothing to do with what going on here. Koran is very clear on that there is ‘no compulsion in religion,’ and to believe or not is a matter of personal freedom,” he wrote. Another topic of interest to him was the new statistics which recently reported that Al Arabiya news channel has surpassed their competitors Al Jazeera in the percentage of viewership in Saudi Arabia. “There is a difference between covering news professionally and neutrally, which is what Al Arabiya does, and “making” the news and shaping them to promote a certain political or partisan ideology. And this exactly what Al Jazeera does,” he added (Arabic).
Jaded Saudi says she is sick and tired of Arabs hating on everything American/Western. She wrote:
I hate it when they twist everything around and make it seem like Americans are attacking them in every freaking way. I hate it when they make rumors up about certain brands and companies (remember the supposed Anti-Muslim message that “appeared” in the Coca-Cola logo that read “No Mohammed, No Mecca”?)
“It is difficult for the victim to feel that his killer is a human being like him, and he becomes shocked when he realizes that they have much in common.” According to Abu-Joory that was the moral of the movies (Arabic) Munich, directed by Steven Spielberg.
On a recent visit to one of the major bookstores in Riyadh, Taqwa has noticed something that annoyed her, made her felt defeated, inferior, and tired of people putting limits on her because of her gender. She says:
It seemed that all of the women were in one section. The section for books about “Women and Marriage” (or something like that), “Beauty”, and “Children Stories”. I say one section, because they were all right next to each other. There were virtually, no women in the other sections (politics, economics, environment, bestsellers, management, sciences, etc) of the bookstore.
Responding to a request by a reader, Tala Al-Bakr writes a post about living in Riyadh from his very own perspective. “The thing is in Riyadh it is very hard to break your routine because there isn't anything else to do especially with your family besides going to restaurants,” he says.
AbOd announces (Arabic) the launch of a new website that he describes as the Arabic alternative to the popular social bookmarking tool del.icio.is. “It is available in Arabic and English now, and we will add more languages soon, such as French which is used by the population of North Africa,” he wrote.
And finally, Amer Al-Sadiq has a letter to spammers: “How would you feel if someone sent you a diaper to your mail box?? How could you do this to me ?!?!What in the hell is wrong with you?? You have disturbed the peace of my day, I've struggled and suffered a lot to get the picture of your stupid diaper out of my head.”